Cooking with Refrigerator Finds - May 23, 2012

It all started with this half jar of peanut butter left in our fridge.  My wonderful mother-in-law, Mary Ellen likes natural peanut butter which we had for some occasion and then forgot.  I love peanut butter, but I’m all about the high sugar very crunchy brands like Skippy and Jiff on sliced apples.  But, you can’t just throw away a half jar of good peanut butter.  Fortunately, it made a wonderful peanut sauce that I put on chopped cabbage with roasted peanuts sprinkled on top.

 Natalie’s Peanut Sauce

1 tsp. chopped ginger

2 finely chopped shallots

¼ c. plus 1 T. peanut butter (or more to taste – I like crunchy)

1/8 c. rice wine vinegar

1 ½ T. soy sauce

1 T. Szechuan sauce

3 T. honey (or more to taste especially with natural peanut butter)

up to ¼ c. sesame oil (or vegetable oil if you don’t have it)

Mix all ingredients until smooth.  Adjust to taste.  Pour over a head of chopped cabbage or noodles and garnish with chopped green onion and peanuts.

If that’s not your style, there is always the traditional peanut butter cookie!

Peanut Butter Cookies

½ c. sugar       

½ c. brown sugar

½ c. peanut butter

¼ c. shortening

¼ c. softened butter

1 egg

1 ¼ c. all-purpose flour

¾ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

Mix sugars, peanut butter, shortening, butter and egg in a bowl.  Then stir in other ingredients, cover and refrigerate two hours.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Shape dough into 1 1/4 inch balls and place 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten with a fork dipped in sugar creating a crisscross pattern.  Bake 9 – 10 minutes and cool 5 minutes.  For a great treat, sandwich a scoop of chocolate ice cream between two of these and roll the edge in chopped nuts or toffee.